ARTICLES ABOUT MANHATTAN PROJECT BY DATE - PAGE 3

Robert Furman, a former Army major who as chief of foreign intelligence for the American atomic bomb project in World War II coordinated and often joined harrowing espionage missions to kidnap German scientists, seize uranium ore in Europe and determine the extent of Nazi efforts to build the bomb, died on Oct. 14 at his home in Adamstown, Md. He was 93. The cause was metastatic melanoma, a skin cancer, said his son, David. Not a spy but a civil engineer by training, Mr. Furman was a protege of Gen. Leslie Groves, the military director of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret program that designed the atom bomb.

Joseph J. Katz worked on the Manhattan Project in the 1940s and during a long career at Argonne National Laboratory made breakthroughs in the mysteries of photosynthesis thanks to his curiosity about the effects of so-called heavy water on plant life. Dr. Katz, 95, died at Montgomery Place, an assisted-living facility in Hyde Park, Monday, Jan. 28, of complications from Alzheimer's disease, said his daughter Betsy Kessler Neugarten. He was a longtime resident of the South Side neighborhood.

Martin J. Sherwin, Pulitzer Prize winning author of 'American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,' writes on why the first atomic explosion continues to rip a great fissure across human history. Plays, books, novels, artistic representations and, finally, an opera. (What took John Adams and Peter Sellars so long?) Robert Oppenheimer's extraordinary life and complex personality have been a magnet for creative artists, not to mention historians and biographers.

Wolfgang "Pief" Panofsky, the nuclear physicist and brilliant administrator who was the driving force for the creation of Stanford University's 2-mile-long linear electron accelerator, made crucial discoveries about the nature of the neutral pi meson, advised three presidents about science and was a powerful proponent of nuclear arms control, died of a heart attack Monday at his home in Los Altos, Calif. He was 88. "The world has lost a truly great man," said physicist Persis Drell, acting director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator, or SLAC.

Chauncey Starr, a pioneer in the fields of nuclear energy and risk analysis and an evangelist for the idea of electrification as a boon to humankind and the environment, died Tuesday at his home in Atherton, Calif. He was 95. Mr. Starr was still coming to work six days a week until the day before his death, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit utility consortium in Palo Alto, Calif., which he founded in 1972. His advocacy and his design work were important in the early years of nuclear power.

Rose A. Carney was a graduate student of physics in her 20s when she began a yearlong stint as a research assistant at the University of Chicago, working on the Manhattan Project. Those close to her say she was part of a team that developed technical instrumentation, and was on hand that historic day, Dec. 2, 1942, when sustained nuclear reaction was observed in the university's test labs. Several years later, Dr. Carney began a 42-year tenure at St. Procopius College in Lisle, becoming the first layperson to serve as a full-time faculty member.

For a three-star commander who was once in charge of the nation's nuclear bombs, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Warren D. "Don" Johnson was by all accounts a pretty nice guy. "He was not a high-maintenance general," said retired Lt. Col. Jay Tutterow, a longtime friend. "He didn't give orders. He led people using respect and charm. You had to screw up more than once to get in his doghouse." Lt. Gen. Johnson, 84, of Winnetka, died Tuesday, Jan. 23, in Highland Park Hospital of congestive heart failure, said his wife, Judy Luken-Johnson.